By Ted Belman
I met Mudar Zahran, currently the Secretary General of the Jordan Opposition Coalition (JOC), some six years ago and have kept closely in touch with him over the years. I watched the JOC being formed and take shape, just as I watched their plan Operation Jordan is Palestine (OJIP) take shape. The goal of the latter is:
“To establish Jordan as the Palestinian homeland, in accordance with international law, where refugees will be settled within safe and secure borders, allowing Israel to become a fully recognized, sovereign state over all of its soil, including all land west of the Jordan River.”
To make this possible, King Abdullah needs to abdicate.
While I agree with this Plan, I never promoted it personally, at least not until Donald Trump was elected president. I believe that if Pres Trump is won over by the plan, he can (and will) make it happen. It will mean the end of UNRWA and the PA.
In April, in the hope of winning him over, I wrote The Ultimate Alternate Plan. I am currently lobbying for this plan in the US.
In June of this year, Zahran and his staff started the International Jewish Muslim Dialogue Center (IJMDC) together with Zionists in Britain, where he has lived for years, and the United States. He and his staff then went on to organize a Conference on the subject The Jordan Option – The ultimate alternate solution to be held in October in Jerusalem. I agreed to be the Chairman of the conference.
A couple of weeks after they started promoting this conference on social media, the shit literally hit the fan.
King Abdullah had initiated a smear campaign against Zahran, the IJMDC, the Conference and me. We should have expected it. But as Phineas T. Barnum, the 19th century American showman and circus owner once said, “There is no such thing as bad publicity”.
There was dead silence from the king’s regime for almost two weeks. This changed on July 2, 2017 when the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the Royal Family’s most diehard supporters and political partners, released a widely published public statement by the king’s media. The MB said:
“The deal of the century was being plotted to turn Jordan into the alternative homeland and waste Palestine and the holy sites, and this plot is happening with the cooperation of some Arabs”.
On July 5, Hamas leader Ismael Haniyah, issued a similar statement that included the following line:
“Hamas would never give up resistance (against Israel) and would never accept Jordan becoming Palestine”. He then warned that “the deal of the century is about to take place under a Palestinian cover”.
The Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ONDI) in Jordan’s government in exile reports:
- Sources inside Jordan’s king Royal Court confirmed that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) statement came upon a specific request from the king’s intelligence desk. The sources confirmed Jordan’s king’s cousin, Prince Firas Ben Raaed, who is also the intelligence desk’s director, commissioned the MB’s leader, Zaki Bani Rushied to prepare and release statements against the conference and also to reach out to Hamas to make similar statements.
- For those who don’t know it, Bani Rushid’s is very close to Hamas’ Gaza leader Ismael Haniyah and fall above him in the Muslim Brother hierarchy in which Hamas is a mere component.
- According to inside sources, the MB’s Director (Zaki Bani Rushied) called Hamas’ Haniyah and requested that he make a statement against the conference. As such, a key phrase was coined – “under the cover of some Palestinians” was exactly in reference to the Palestinians and Jordanians taking part in the conference.
- An inside source close to Jordan’s king’s intelligence desk confirmed to ONDI that the regime is very afraid of the conference, but doesn’t want to come out in opposition to it for a variety of reasons. The largest being that if he speaks out, he will be recognizing that there is an actual opposition to his regime. The king is also afraid that if he recognizes it, he will be admitting that there are other options besides the destruction of Israel. The source confirmed the king had commissioned “several third parties” to do the talking for him.
- The king’s standard rhetoric with the West is that there is no organized opposition for him at all except for the Islamic terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which makes him the only reasonable option for ruling the country. Now the west knows the truth – terrorists who do not want peace in the middle east, work with (and for) the King, and that there is an active opposition movement against his dictatorship.
- Jordan’s King urges supporters to wage proxy attacks.The regime’s proxy attacks didn’t stop with statements by its Islamist mouthpieces. On July 5th, Jordan’s king’s loyalist and self-described “opposition figure” Laith Shubilat posted the conference flyer on his Facebook page and said, “The alleged opposition wants to take the Jordan option for peace off the table, may they bury me.”
- A Journalistic source close to Shubilat opined: “The regime is suffocating to death and your Conference is the last thing it needs”. He then went on to say that “the king wants to fight you but he is afraid of launching a campaign against you, so he is doing it by proxy. He is afraid that any campaign against you could (and would) give you more legitimacy not just before the leaders of the West, but his subjects, especially now that he realizes how popular and accepted the JOC and Zahran are by the Jordanian public and leaders in the west.”
- The King Threatening the Speakers. Also on July 5th, Jordanian scholar and Opposition figure Samer Libdeh received a phone call from his father, renowned journalist, Mustafa Abu Libdeh. Libdeh’s father told him that he was forced to pass along a message that Samer had to “quit his participation” in the conference or else the Jordanian government will end his father’s career by pressuring the UAE government to cancel the father’s employment contract with a newspaper owned by the UAE.
But the problems with the King predates this event.
In February, 2012, I published a report from the Jordan Times about a 21 year old blogger in Jordan who was stabbed multiple times by a “thug”. Her family said the reason for this attack was probably because “Musallam wrote a statement in Arabic on her blog addressed to Prince Hassan, criticizing him for “underestimating the minds and abilities of the Jordanian people”.
The Public Security Department of Jordan vehemently denied this and proceeded to smear her. I took up her case and a telephone call was arranged. When I called her, it was obvious she had been visited and threatened. She told me that she doesn’t agree with me and that I shouldn’t bother her any more.
In 2012, Mudar Zahran wrote in Jordan Is Palestinian, published by MEFORUM,
”The unspoken truth is that the Palestinians, the country’s largest ethnic group, have developed a profound hatred of the regime and view the Hashemites as occupiers of eastern Palestine—intruders rather than legitimate rulers. “
He went on to describe the discrimination and oppression the Palestinians were subjected to by the King.
JPOST reported in Feb 2014, that Mudar “was sentenced in absentia last week in the Hashemite Kingdom to jail with hard labor” perhaps for 15 years. As a result, he applied for and was granted, asylum, in Britain where he currently lives.
In Sept 2015, Mohammed Btaibet in Jordan’s king promotes anti-Semitism explained why Jordan’s king is not an ally of the State of Israel and how the Jordanian media routinely promotes anti-Semitism in order to prevent the people within the country from rallying against the regime.
In October 2016 Zahran wrote in an article titled Jordan’s King Abdullah: Threatening the World
“Last month, Jordan’s King Abdullah addressed the world from the UN Podium, directly warning Israel that it could “be engulfed in a sea of hatred in a region of turmoil.” These threats were not “just talk” as some of his few remaining Western cheerleaders would like to claim, but in fact, the king was making a threat, which he has executed into actions that could bring the world one step closer to another war in the Middle East.”
“What’s most alarming about this whole situation is this: the king clearly handed the parliament to Islamists whose agenda is to radicalize the public, cause instability in the region, and spread hatred against the West, USA and Israel.
“In total, at least 35 members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) are now in the parliament (Almost 27% of 130 seats) 15 members come from the Islamic Action Front Party, 10 from the Centrist Islamic Party and 10 MB affiliates who are not official members of the Brotherhood..
“.. making their vigorous return to the parliament evidence of a much-rumored “handshake” deal between the MB and the king.”
So, just at a time when the Gulf States have declared the MB a terrorist organization and the US is considering doing the same, the king empowers them.
In Jordan’s King Supports ISIS,
“,,,, you will see, with documented evidence, that Jordan’s king has been supporting ISIS, at best, with his recklessness and incompetence, or at worst; he empowers ISIS on purpose for reasons that will be explained here.”
In 2016, the New York Times reported in C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say,
“Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.”
The US State Department published Jordan 2015 Human Rights Report. In it they literally threw the book at Jordan.
In May 2017, a Jordanian attacked and stabbed an Israeli officer in Jerusalem. The officer neutralized him and a very shocking video of the incident shows the attacker was relentless in trying to kill the Israeli. Nonetheless, Jordan’s government shocked the world by blaming Israel for what happened.
Mudar Zahran wrote, “Jordan’s king’s close advisor and his spokesperson, Mohammad AlMomani, said what happened was a “heinous crime” and “Israel is to blame because it is the occupying force”.
This has driven Israeli Prime Minister to forgo his silence about Jordan, officially making a statement himself: ”It’s time Jordan stopped playing both sides of the game,” he said. Adding that: “It is outrageous to hear the Jordanian government’s speaker support the terror attack which occurred today in Jerusalem’s Old City.”
As it happens, a year earlier another Jordanian killed four people in a restaurant in Israel. The prosecutor confirmed, “He was exposed to ISIS teachings while in Jordan.”
In fact, a recent congressional report confirmed more than 4,000 Jordanians were fighting with ISIS.
Zahran advises “The problem with Jordan is the fact that radicalization in Jordan is manufactured, incited, aided, and promoted by the regime itself.” And then explains how.
Our conference will take place as planned and hopefully our plan, The Ultimate Alternate Solution, will be adopted by Pres Trump and brought to fruition.
The Palestinians who comprise 75% of the population in Jordan need to be liberated from such an oppressive regime.
King Abdullah needs to abdicate.
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